Lifeline: Beside You in Time 9+

This was really satisfying to play through! The sound design and music for this game, compared to past games, feels even more intentional and had a great deal of texture to it, the inclusion of other characters was an interesting evolution from the previous Taylorverse Lifeline games, being able to input a name was a massive improvement—and I kinda wish the old games could have something like that patched in, even if only to have the player’s name acknowledged once upon Taylor receiving it and not addressing the player by name again… but that’s just my personal opinion speaking.

Overall, I still think Dave Justus’ character writing could use some tweaking and the choices between ‘best path’ and ‘worst paths’ are becoming a lot more binary, and feel like they are abandoning an element of player choice that has been present in other Lifeline games. However, the inclusion of Hydrox the bunny is enough to sway me into bumping my rating up an entire star… though, ultimately, I do wish we could’ve told Taylor to stuff some vegetables into a bag of some sort (maybe something we could have picked up in another room)… poor Taylor and Hydrox will have nothing to sustain themselves on for a good long while, it seems.

In any case, this is a great installment of the Taylor series of Lifeline. I would hope that they continue appearing in future games, if more are ever made… until then, I enjoyed it dearly.

Not gonna lie. Started playing this new game and found out real early you can mess up LOL. Taylor has been apart of my sister and I life for awhile. We played through every game involving Taylor. Lifeline, Silent Night and Halfway Through Infinity. Once we discovered you guys were indeed working on a new game..we went back and replayed the old games to make sure we are updated for this new one ! Taylor had grown on me and I make sure I try and make the best decisions (let’s pretend I didn’t get her in trouble already lol) to help her on her journey. I’m glad you guys made it through the pandemic safe and sound. I hope we get to see more Taylor games. Well let me go finish this game ! It’s already 5 stars. It always has been.

I’ve loved this series, and I’m loving this story! The additional characters are really interesting, and I’m definitely invested in Taylor!

However, this game has had several continuity errors. I never noticed any in the first three Taylor games. When I noticed one in this game I just figured, hey, writing all this choose-your-own-adventure type content can’t be easy! But I’m not terribly far into this game and there’s been three already. The dialogue options trap me into giving a character information I never got in the first place, or Taylor repeats a bit of dialogue they already gave me just a few lines above… That kind of thing. Individually, no big deal! But so many this early in the game makes me worry this game was not as well made as the others in the series.

Which would be really disappointing, because the story is great, and I want to see where it goes! Preferably in a coherent, continuity-having way!